Cold War Secrets Slowly Unveiled

Many are not aware of this or chose not to be concerned about it, but a few are aware that throughout the Cold War's iciest decades, the top-secret Parcae project, shrouded in secrecy for over 30 years, provided the U.S. with unmatched capabilities in electronic eavesdropping.

This covert operation was essential in upholding the principle of mutual assured destruction (MAD) and preventing geopolitical tensions from escalating into nuclear warfare.

By the early 1970s, the Soviet Navy's expansion, marked by the deployment of formidable Kirov class nuclear-powered cruisers, significantly shifted the global naval power dynamic. The U.S. found itself urgently needing to bridge a critical surveillance gap. Lee M. Hammarstrom, an electrical engineer deeply involved in Cold War technology, highlights the period's challenges, noting, "We were under MAD at this time, so if the Soviets had a way to negate our strikes, they might have considered striking first."

Despite existing efforts like the ELINT (electronic intelligence) satellite program Poppy, which could detect and locate Soviet radar emissions, the U.S. intelligence community struggled with slow data processing that could take weeks to interpret. In 1971, extensive naval drills exposed further vulnerabilities in the U.S.'s satellite intelligence systems, necessitating robust and rapid response mechanisms.

This was when Parcae was conceived. The most advanced orbiting electronic intelligence system to date, it was poised to fill this critical void in U.S. global maritime surveillance.

Drawing on a series of reports and comprehensive interviews by IEEE Spectrum, this article explores how Parcae provided the United States with unprecedented ocean surveillance capabilities, countering the growing Soviet maritime threat.

For decades, the existence of the Parcae satellites was one of the U.S. government's most closely guarded secrets, concealed even from those within much of the military establishment. It wasn't until July 2023 that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) acknowledged the existence of these satellites with a sparse one-page document.

This revelation came during the centennial celebration of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the Parcae project. Since its inception in 1961, the NRO has been at the helm of the United States spy satellite operations, overseeing several programs, including photoreconnaissance, communications interception, and signals intelligence.

Over the years, hints of the Parcae program seeped into public knowledge through diligent journalism and even comments from a Russian military advisor. These disclosures highlighted U.S. engineers' intense pressure and creativity during the Cold War, driven by the era's high stakes and pervasive paranoia to develop groundbreaking national security technologies.

Parcae stood on the shoulders of its predecessors in the U.S. Navy's satellite ELINT programs, initiated by the NRO. The first in this lineage was the GRAB satellite, launched in 1960 as the world's inaugural spy satellite under the guise of the Galactic Radiation and Background experiment, a dual-purpose mission concealing its covert operations behind a legitimate scientific facade.

GRAB's primary mission, cloaked in secrecy until 1998, involved monitoring Soviet radar emissions, which provided the NSA and the Strategic Air Command with crucial intelligence for strategic planning, although with significant delays in data processing.

Following GRAB, the Poppy program, introduced in 1962 and continuing until 1977, advanced the capabilities of satellite intelligence with multiple satellites that could approximately locate the source of emissions.

This program marked a significant evolution in intelligence gathering, setting the stage for rapid data relay directly to ground stations, bypassing earlier cumbersome recording processes. This innovation hinted at the potential for near-instantaneous intelligence delivery, setting ambitious new expectations for what would eventually be realized with Parcae.

Launching its first mission in 1976 and completing the last two decades later, the Parcae project marked a significant evolution in satellite signals intelligence. Over its operational lifetime, the program was known by several cryptic aliases like White Cloud and Classic Wizard, with its official decommissioning in May 2008.

The early missions utilized the Atlas F rocket to deploy three satellites into precise orbital formations essential for tracking and geolocation, later transitioning to the more powerful Titan IV-A rocket. This strategic placement was made possible by innovative engineering, including a satellite dispenser developed by an NRL team led by Peter Wilhelm, a pivotal figure who oversaw the creation of over 100 satellites during his tenure.

A key technological advancement in Parcae was implementing a gravity-gradient stabilization boom. This device, featuring a long retractable arm with a weight at the end, allowed for precise control of the satellite's orientation, ensuring continuous earthward alignment of its antennae.

The satellites operated in triads, reflecting their namesake, the three fates of Roman mythology. They utilized highly precise, synchronized clocks to detect and triangulate Soviet naval emissions, significantly enhancing the U.S. Navy's maritime surveillance capabilities.

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A Massive Hidden Fortress Discovered In Caucasus Mountains

Way back in 2018, a group of researchers walked to the mountainous Bronze Age fortress in the South Caucasus mountains. They had no idea that the ruins they could see were just the tip of the iceberg. However, after taking to the skies and utilizing 11,000 drone-shot images to map the structure, they realized that the 3,000-year-old Dmanisis Gora was likely the largest fortress of its kind in the region.

These researchers discovered a fortified promontory between two deep gorges in the Caucasus Mountains, which serves as a boundary between Europe and Asia.

The site had both and inner and outer fortress wall, and the remains of ancient stone structures visible to the researchers. But it was all too large to map on foot, so researchers form Cranfield University turned to technology for help.

"That was what sparked the idea of using a drone to assess the site from the air," Nathaniel Erb-Satullo, senior lecturer in architectural science at the Cranfield Forensic Institute, said in a statement. "The drone took nearly 11,000 pictures which were knitted together using advanced software to produce high-resolution digital elevation models and orthophotos—composite pictures that show every point as if you were looking straight down."

The team shared the findings in a study published in the journal Antiquity, and highlighted how stitching the data together created "accurate maps of all the fortification walls, graves, field systems, and other stone structures within the outer settlement." The site turned out to be more than 40 times larger than originally thought, and featured an over-half-a-mile-long fortification wall.

"The exceptional size of Dmanisis Gora helps add new dimensions to population aggregation models in Eurasia and beyond," the authors wrote in the study.

Comparing the new photos with 50-year-old Cold War-era spy satellite images of the region, which were declassified in 2013, the Cranfield team was able to assess the entire ancient settlement, and see how it had and hadn’t changed.

"The use of drones has allowed us to understand the significance of the site and document it in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible on the ground," Erb-Satullo said. "Dmanisis Gora isn’t just a significant find for the Southern Caucasus region but has a broader significance for the diversity in the structure of large-scale settlements and their formation processes."

According to the researchers, the two fortified walls functioned together for protection. They were both made with rough boulders and mortar, creating six-foot-thick shields against outside forces.

"If the occupation of the inner fortress and outer settlement were roughly contemporary, as we suggest," the authors wrote in the study, "this settlement would be one of the largest known in the South Caucasus Late Bronze and Iron Age."

The team believes that Dmanisis Gora continued to expand over time, as mobile pastoral groups joined the settlement. But part of the population may have been seasonal. Relatively few artifacts were found within the outer wall, which indicated that it was likely a less densely populated space. That, in turn, meant that the fortress may have only been used in certain times of the year. The team hopes to study the site further to understand functions of specific areas, and learn about everything from population density and intensity to livestock movements and agricultural practices.

Work is already underway at the site to pull out what the researchers claim are "tens of thousands" of pottery shards, animal bones, and other artifacts that go deeper than the stone walls.

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Innovative Discovery In Carbon Capture

Several researchers at the University of Oregon have made an amazing breakthrough that could be a game-changer in the field of carbon capture. They have synthesized new titanium molecules that react with air to remove carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide in the air is a major source of the rising global and ocean temperatures. So, a major way to fight back is through carbon capture and storage efforts. "Carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) can play a significant role in mitigating carbon emissions in the future and is a key technology for the decarbonization of the energy sector in the long term," according to the United Nations.

There are more advanced carbon capture efforts at so-called points of entry, such as power plants and refineries. This means carbon dioxide pollution is captured before it enters the atmosphere. But these methods are expensive and require a lot of energy. That's why the ability to capture carbon already in the air would be a major innovation.

The researchers built on earlier research they did with vanadium, an element right next to titanium on the periodic table. "We opted to look into titanium as it's 100 times cheaper than vanadium, more abundant, more environmentally friendly and already well established in industrial uses," Karlie Bach, a graduate student who worked on the study, explained.

"The metal is found combined in practically all rocks, sand, clay, and other soils," Britannica declares.

This is only the latest exciting development in the field of direct air carbon capture. Microsoft just announced a big investment in Deep Sky, a company working on such efforts. And another company called SpiralWave is developing technology that can turn carbon dioxide into liquid fuel.

Carbon capture efforts remain hotly contested. Some argue they are necessary, while others say they prop up dirty energy companies and don't do enough to deal with the problem.

But with each new innovative discovery, the problem of our overheating atmosphere seems more solvable.

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Improving Propulsion System Through Simulation

In the future, spacecraft powered by electric propulsion will be better protected against their own exhaust. This is the result of new new supercomputer simulations.

Electric propulsion is a more efficient alternative to traditional chemical rockets, and it's being increasingly used on space missions, starting off with prototypes on NASA's Deep Space 1 and the European Space Agency's SMART-1 in 1998 and 2003, respectively, and subsequently finding use on flagship science missions such as NASA's Dawn and Psyche missions to the asteroid belt. There are even plans to use electric propulsion on NASA's Lunar Gateway space station.

The idea behind electric propulsion is that an electric current ionizes (i.e. removes an electron from) atoms of a neutral gas, such as xenon or krypton, stored on board a spacecraft. The ionization process produces a cloud of ions and electrons. Then a principle called the Hall effect generates an electric field that accelerates the ions and electrons and channels them into a characteristically blue plume that emerges from the spacecraft at over 37,000 mph (60,000 kph). Hence an electric propulsion system is also referred to as an ion engine.

According to Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The plume of ions jetting out from the spacecraft therefore acts to provide thrust. It takes a while to build up momentum, however, because, despite moving at high velocity, the ion plume is pretty sparse.

The impulse generated is not as immediately forceful as a chemical rocket, but ion engines require less fuel and therefore less mass, which reduces launch costs, and ion engines don't use up all their fuel as quickly as chemical rockets do.

The energy for the electromagnetic fields is often provided by solar arrays, and hence the technology is sometimes referred to as solar electric propulsion. But for missions farther from the sun, where the sunlight is fainter, nuclear power in the form of radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) can also be used to drive the electric propulsion.

Though electric propulsion is now maturing and is being used in a variety of missions, it's not a perfect technology. One problem in particular is that the ion plume can damage a spacecraft.

Although the plume is pointed away from the probe, electrons in the plume can find themselves redirected, moving against the plume's direction of travel and impacting the spacecraft, damaging solar arrays, communication antennas and any other exposed components. Suffice to say, this isn't good for the probe.

"For missions that could last years, [electric propulsion] thrusters must operate smoothly and consistently over long periods of time," Chen Cui of the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science said in a statement.

Before solutions can be put in place to protect a spacecraft from these backscattered electrons, their behavior in an ion-engine plume must first be understood, which is where Cui and Joseph Wang of the University of Southern California come in. They've performed supercomputer simulations of an ion engine's exhaust, modeling the thermodynamic behavior of the electrons and how they affect the overall characteristics of the plume.

"These particles may be small, but their movement and energy play an important role in determining the macroscopic dynamics of the plume emitted from the electric propulsion thruster," said Cui.

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"Sunken Worlds" Discovered Within Earth's Mantle

There are potential patches of Earth's ancient crust, sometimes called "sunken worlds," that may have just been discovered deep within the mantle, thanks to a new way of mapping the inside of our planet. However, these mysterious blobs appear in places they should not, leaving researchers scratching their heads.

For decades, scientists have been building up a better picture of Earth's interior by using seismographs — 3D images created by measuring how seismic waves from earthquakes reverberate deep within our planet.

The method adopted has helped scientists identify ancient sections of the planet's crust, known as subducted slabs, that have been pulled into the mantle through subduction zones where tectonic plates meet. For example, in October 2024, researchers announced the discovery of a section of seafloor that had sunk deep into the mantle below Easter Island.

In a study published 4 November 2024, in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers revealed that they had discovered "numerous" potential subducted slabs throughout Earth's mantle, using a new type of seismographic imaging.

However, unlike previously identified subducted slabs, which are found in areas where tectonic plates currently collide or have previously smashed together, some of the new anomalies are located in places where no known tectonic activity has ever occurred, such as below the western Pacific Ocean. As a result, it is unclear how they ended up there.

"That's our dilemma," Thomas Schouten, a doctoral candidate at the ETH Zurich Geological Institute in Switzerland, said in a statement released 7 January. "With the new high-resolution model, we can see such anomalies everywhere in the Earth's mantle. But we don't know exactly what they are."

There are other potential explanations for the newly mapped blobs. For example, they may be made of crust-like material left over from the mantle's creation 4 billion years ago. Or they may consist of some other similarly dense material that has grown within the mantle over the past few hundred million years.

However, these are just alternative theories. At the moment, the identity of these blobs remains a "major mystery," ETH Zurich representatives wrote in the statement.

Until now, everything we know about Earth's innards has come from stitching together different seismographs created from different individual earthquakes across the globe. But in the new study, researchers used a new method, known as full-waveform inversion, which uses computer models to combine these seismographs into a single clear image.

This is a computationally intensive method, and to pull it off, researchers had to run the model on the Piz Daint supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputer Center in Lugano — formerly Europe's most powerful computer — to crunch the numbers.

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Spiral Galaxy Jet Puzzles Astronomers

The Hubble Space Telescope image (seen above) is from last year, and it showcases several galaxies that inhabit a pocket of our universe roughly 5.94 billion light-years away from us. Astronomers, however, have been particularly intrigued by what isn't visible in the image, but rather only "seen" through radio emissions.

Blasting from the central galaxy — home to a black hole more than 400 million times our sun — is a powerful jet that could provide fresh clues about how galaxies and their black holes evolve in tandem over eons. First, however, astromoners need to figure out where this jet in the Hubble Telescope image came from in the first place.

Jets like these are known to erupt from elliptical galaxies that have been sculpted through chaotic mergers with other galaxies — such mergers are the key to funneling gas and dust toward gargantuan black holes lurking at the centers of galaxies and fueling the jets even further. But astronomers scrutinizing this particular Hubble image found the central galaxy actually sports a swirl of spiral arms seemingly unruffled by any such merger, raising new questions about what might have triggered its jet.

"At first, I thought I completely messed up during our research," Olivia Achenbach of the United States Naval Academy told reporters last 13 January at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Maryland. "Because it's such a large supermassive black hole at the center, we'd predicted we'd see an elliptical galaxy."

The spiral host galaxy, a quasar named J0742+2704, was discovered emanating a "newborn" jet in 2020 in new and archival radio surveys, which recorded radio emissions that revealed the jet had "switched on" within just two decades.

Pinning down the physics of these galactic jets is of interest not only to astronomers, who use radio observations of thousands of quasars to populate the celestial grid that guides telescope pointing, but also to the U.S. Navy, which relies on the cosmic lighthouses as navigational beacons in GPS-constrained environments.

Newfound quasars like J0742+2704 serve as additional reference points in these systems, and studying their jets — which can significantly offset the positions of quasars when viewed from Earth — can help researchers better understand and eventually predict their elusive nature.

"We don't really understand the physics of these quasars of their jets," Achenbach said during the briefing. "It's really important to understand this physics to maintain navigation systems."

"If we looked at this galaxy 20 years, or maybe even a decade ago, we would have seen a fairly average quasar and never known it would eventually be home to newborn jets," she said in the same statement. "It goes to show that if you keep searching, you can find something remarkable that you never expected, and it can send you in a whole new direction of discovery."

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The World Says Goodnight To Gaia

Everything will eventually end for the star-tracking European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, Gaia. The mission, which has been mapping the Milky Way for the last 12 years, shut down science operations last 15 January.

The close of the mission's data-collecting phase was necessitated by Gaia running low on cold gas propellant it uses to spin. The top-hat-shaped craft has been using around 12 grams of this propellent a day since it launched from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana atop a Soyuz-Fregat rocket on 19 December 2013.

However, even though Gaia may be closing its eyes to the cosmos, this is far from the end of the spacecraft's influence on space science.

"In my mind, the Gaia mission is not ending — just the taking of data," Kareem El-Badry, a Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) researcher and frequent Gaia data user, told Space.com. "I expect Gaia's best results are still to come. That includes in the areas I am most interested in — binary stars and black holes."

Throughout its operational lifetime, Gaia studied almost 2 billion stars and other objects in and around the Milky Way. This vast stellar census contains details of star motions, luminosities, temperatures and compositions.

The aim is to build the largest and most precise 3D map of our local universe. The spacecraft's first data release dropped on 14 September 2016; the second followed on 25 April 2018, and the third (and latest) came out on 13 June 2022.

Gaia's science team won't have time to grieve the loss of Gaia; they are preparing for Gaia Data Release 4 (GR4), which is expected before mid-2026. Based on five and a half years of observations, ESA said that GR4 will not be "more of the same" but rather is expected to trump GR3 in terms of data volume and quality.

Once all of Gaia's data has been downloaded to Earth, work will begin on GR5, the final data release from the spacecraft. This will be a monster data dump containing stellar observations collected over 10.5 years. GR5 isn't expected to be released by the end of the 2020s.

"Less than one-third of all the Gaia data has been published so far, and the final data won’t be science-ready until the 2030s," El-Badry said. "It takes a lot of human and computation work to process the data."

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Californian Firefighters Warned About Possible Fire Tornadoes

It's as if they aren’t already facing enough, firefighters in California could also encounter fire tornadoes — a rare but dangerous phenomenon in which wildfires create their own weather.

The National Weather Service warned last 14 January that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions have created a "particularly dangerous situation" in which any new fire could explode in size. The advisory, which runs into Wednesday, didn’t mention tornadoes, but meteorologist Todd Hall said they're possible given the extreme conditions.

Across the country from the California wildfires, researchers in Massachusetts are working to recreate a smaller-scale version of the phenomenon in a lab where it can be studied.

What is a fire tornado?

Fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado or even firenado — scientists, firefighters and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don’t always agree on what’s what. Some say fire whirls are formed only by heat, while fire tornadoes involve clouds generated by the fire itself.

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s glossary of wildland fire terms doesn’t include an entry for fire tornado, but it defines a fire whirl as a "spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire and carrying aloft smoke, debris and flame," and says large whirls "have the intensity of a small tornado."

Wildfires with turbulent plumes can produce clouds that in turn can produce lightning or a vortex of ash, smoke and flames, said Leila Carvalho, professor of meteorology and climatology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"There is a rotation caused by very strong wind shear and a very hot, localized low-pressure system," she said.

What is a fire tornado capable of?

Fire tornadoes can make fires stronger by sucking up air, Carvalho said. "It creates a tornado track, and wherever this goes, the destruction is like any other tornado."

In 2018, a fire tornado the size of three football fields killed a firefighter as it exploded in what already was a vast and devastating wildfire near Redding, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of San Francisco in northern California. Scientists later described an ice-capped cloud that reached 7 miles (11 km) into the air and caused winds up to 143 mph (230 kph).

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Battle of Camarón Defined The Devilish Bravery Of French Legionnaires

During the spring of 1863, Camarón is nown as a dreary village in eastern Mexico on the fever-haunted road connecting Veracruz and the French fleet there with Puebla, on the Mexican plateau.

At Puebla lay the French Army, still trying to win an empire for Napoleon III and his Habsburg puppet, Maximilian, younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph. The French intervention had begun as an attempt to recover interest payments on large loans from several European nations on which the Mexican government had defaulted.

Foreign troops had occupied several Mexican ports, promising President Benito Juarez that they would keep out of Mexican political affairs. All but the French soon saw the futility of the effort and went home. But the French, hungering for empire and determined to put the Austrian prince on the throne of a faraway country in name of French banks, held out.

Napoleon III was a pale imitation of his formidable namesake. He saw the Mexican default as a chance for both military glory and a renewed French foothold in the new world. It was a harebrained notion, and both Franz Josef and the British government advised against the adventure.

Besides the difficulty of campaigning in Mexico, it was clear to the unbiased observer that the United States would never tolerate a European power ruling part of the Western Hemisphere. The American Civil War would be over in time, and two of the finest armies in the world—the Union and Confederate Armies facing each other in the field—were both American.

One night at the end of April 1863, an Indian spy brought word to Legion Colonel Pierre Jeanningros that the next supply convoy would be attacked by powerful Mexican forces, including regular troops. The convoy was a large one—60 carts and 150 mules—and it was critical, carrying not only food and ammunition but also four million francs in gold and badly needed artillery. The convoy would need help along the road, and that help could come only from the Legion.

Jeanningros had few troops of his own to send. In addition to the convoy’s small escort, he could spare only a single company, the 3rd Company of the Legion’s 2nd Battalion, already down to half strength. But the colonel could send the experienced Jean Danjou as its commander. The captain would have two other officers to help him, both second lieutenants. One, Napoleon Vilain, was a boyish ex-enlisted man; the other, Clement Maudet, was an old sweat who had risen through the ranks to sergeant-major before winning his commission.

Shortly after daylight, at a halt to refill its canteens with water and make a little coffee, the company saw its first Mexican cavalry. Danjou reacted instantly, falling back toward Camarón to cover the all-important road. He was fired on from a dilapidated hacienda in the village, a place called Hacienda La Trindad, and a legionnaire was wounded.

And then Danjou saw hundreds of Mexican cavalrymen. The company formed a hollow square, and its disciplined volley firing twice broke Mexican charges, littering the ground with fallen horsemen. Danjou knew that he must find cover—the enemy was far too strong to take on in the open. He ordered a retreat into Camarón.

Danjou’s men began to take casualties early from the heavy Mexican fire. They returned it, firing carefully and choosing their targets. Not only is fine fire-discipline a Legion tradition, but the Legion pack-mules had bolted at the first Mexican charge, taking with them the reserve ammunition. Danjou’s men had only the 60 cartridges each carried in his pouch.

To make matters worse, the legionnaires were also low on water, most of which had vanished with the frightened mules. None was available in the building they were to hold. The company had to endure the horrors of thirst in the oven-like enclosure. It was especially horrible for the wounded. Before the day was over, they would be reduced to licking the blood from their own wounds for moisture. At 9:30 A.M., the Mexican commander sent in a flag of truce and offered the legionnaires the chance to surrender. Danjou scornfully refused.

To each man Danjou gave a sip of the raw pinard, and required each soldier to swear an oath to die rather than surrender. Each man swore, and before the end of the hellish broiling day, each man would keep faith with this strange communion. "Legionnaires die better than any men in the world," Danjou said with a certain proud fatalism.

A little while before noon, Danjou kept his own rendezvous with destiny. He was running from one building to check a detachment behind a barricade when a sniper’s bullet hit him in the chest. He lived only moments. Young Lieutenant Vilain got to him; Danjou tried to speak but could not. Then he was still. Vilain took command of the 40 remaining men and fought on, declining another chance to surrender with the typical Legion oath: "Merde!"

Vilain was also killed as he, too, crossed the open area to check on his men. Maudet, the ex-sergeant-major, took command of the pitiful little band that remained. Nearly everyone was wounded by now, and the barrels of the long Le Gras rifles were far too hot to touch.

At last, nearly all the blue-coated soldiers lay still in the dirt. Only five remained standing—the hard-eyed Maudet, husky Corporal Maine, and three privates. They were down to one last cartridge apiece, and Maudet looked around at the remnants of his little command. He gave his last orders, and his men nodded. They fired a last volley together and then they followed him with their bayonets into thousands of howling mob of Mexicans drawing ever closer.

As they charged into the blazing sun, a blast of Mexican fire stopped the legionnaires in their tracks. A Belgian legionnaire named Catteau stepped in front of his officer and took 19 bullets intended for Maudet. Even so, Maudet went down too, along with one of the privates. Their ammunition was entirely gone, but their luck held.

The mass of Mexicans was halted by their officer, a French-born colonel named Combas, who blocked his men’s bayonets with his sword blade and called on the legionnaires in French to surrender. Maine, the ranking officer, agreed, "if we keep our arms and you care for our officer."

Combas answered, "One refuses nothing to such men as you." His superior, Colonel Francisco de Paula Milan, wanted to know where the others were. "There are no more," said Combras. "Pero, no son hombres, son demonios," said Milan. "Then these are not men, but devils."

Thus ended the stand at Camarón, 11 hours in the blazing sun, during which the legionnaires had fired almost 4,000 rounds and left at least 300 of their enemy dead or wounded around them. In return, 39 legionnaires lay dead in the hacienda. The terrible heat and wounds would kill most of the rest, including Maudet, despite Mexican attempts to save them. The few survivors passed into captivity and were later exchanged for Mexican prisoners. The convoy would go through untouched.

The relief column, which arrived at Camarón much too late to rescue any of Danjou’s legionnaires, buried their dead comrades in a common grave. Danjou’s wooden hand was picked up by a local rancher, who kept the thing as a sort of souvenir for a couple of years before selling it back to General Achille Bazaine, the French commander in Mexico, himself a one-time Legion officer.

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Did The "Mountain Meadows Massacre" Really Happened?

When Netflix’s new limited series "American Primeval" debuted this week, it quickly claimed the top spot as the streamer’s most popular show. While watching, many were might be wondering how much of story is based on real-life events and if the characters are historically accurate.

Directed and executive produced by Peter Berg, with writing by Mark L. Smith, "American Primeval" is a six-episode drama set in 1857 Utah Territory. The series explores the violent conflicts between Native Americans, pioneers, Mormon soldiers, and the U.S. government. The historical drama stars Taylor Kitsch, Betty Gilpin, Kim Coates, Shea Whigham, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, and Shawnee Pourier.

According to Berg, "it is a historical drama that incorporates real events, such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, along with the stories of actual people who lived in Utah during the deadly 1857 Utah War."

The Mountain Meadows Massacre happened on 11 September 1857. On that date, some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by American Indian allies, massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. This tragic event, which spared only 17 children age six and under, occurred in a valley called the Mountain Meadows, roughly 35 miles southwest of Cedar City.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the massacre happened during a period of heightened tensions between the federal government and the Brigham Young-led theocracy in Utah Territory.

As federal troops were dispatched to the region, the Latter-day Saints, fearing war, became increasingly distrustful of outsiders. When a wagon train of emigrants traveling from Arkansas to California passed through the area, Mormon militiamen and Paiute Indians surrounded the group and brutally slaughtered more than 100 men, women, and children. After the massacre those who did it took the emigrants’ belongings and tried to hide what they had done.

Without knowing what had happened to the emigrants, the U.S. army got stuck near Fort Bridger, in what is now Wyoming, during the winter. This gave the Latter-day Saint leaders and U.S. leaders a chance to meet and to find a solution to their disagreements. Their meetings ended what some people call the "Utah War" before any real fighting happened between the Mormon militia and the U.S. army.

Many years after the massacre, the government accused John D. Lee of leading the Mormon militia and the Indians who had killed the emigrants. He was convicted and executed 20 years after the massacre at the site where it had happened.

The Latter-day church punished some of the Saints who were involved. Eight Latter-day Saint leaders and militia leaders hid from law enforcers for the rest of their lives. Some Paiutes were looked down on by both Indians and others for killing the emigrants.

Berg said that he and Smith conducted extensive research to bring the massacre to life on screen.

"We used several books, met with authors of those books, went to the site of the massacre, and tried to get as comprehensive a understanding of how that event happened as possible, from what was going on with the Mormon church at that moment to what was happening with the pioneers trying to move through the area, and what Native American tribes were caught in the crossfire," he told Town & Country.

The directed continued, "We used that event to ground us in history; the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the tension between the U.S. government and the Mormon Church could anchor our attempts at telling a story that is, in many ways, based upon fact."

Because the perpetrators were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church has made great efforts to heal the wounds caused by the massacre.

In 1999, then-President Gordon B. Hinckley joined with descendants of the victims to dedicate a monument at the site. Since then, the Church has worked with descendant groups to maintain the monument and surrounding property and is committed to improving and preserving the area in the future.

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Blue Origin Rocket Ready For Flight

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is now preparing their powerful New Glenn rocket for its delayed but long-awaited maiden flight, kicking off a high-stakes bid to compete head-to-head with Elon Musk's SpaceX and its industry dominating Falcon family of rockets.

While more than one successful test flight will be needed to demonstrate the reliability needed for launches of costly NASA probes, high-priority national security payloads and other commercial spacecraft, the New Glenn, nearly 10 years after Bezos announced the project, is expected to be a viable alternative.

Mounted atop pad 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the 321-foot-tall rocket is scheduled for blast off at 1 a.m. EST Monday, the opening of a three-hour window. Blue Origin had hoped to launch the rocket Friday, then Sunday, but both opportunities were ruled out due to rough seas in the booster landing zone.

Like SpaceX's Falcon rockets, the first stage of the New Glenn, powered by seven methane-burning BE-4 engines generating a combined 3.8 million pounds of thrust, was designed to be reusable.

After boosting the rocket's upper stage out of the lower atmosphere three minutes and 10 seconds after launch, the 188-foot-tall first stage will separate and attempt to land on a 380-foot-long custom-built ship named after Bezos' mother, Jacklyn, that will be stationed downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

From launch to touchdown: nine minutes and 28 seconds. While SpaceX tested its Falcon 9 landing system with ocean splashdowns before attempting an actual landing, Blue Origin is making the attempt on the rocket's maiden flight. Appropriately enough, the company named the booster "So You're Telling Me There's A Chance."

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New Extractions Method Made China A Big Lithium Producer

China has nearly tripled its lithium reserves aftervrecent discoveries, elevating its status to the world’s second-largest holder of this essential metal for renewable energy technology, according to the state news agency Xinhua.

The nation now controls 16.5 percent of global lithium reserves, surpassing Australia, Argentina, and Bolivia, and trails behind just one country - Chile.

Previously estimated to possess 6 percent of the world's lithium reserves, China's significant increase is the result of new deposit discoveries and advanced extraction methods that make it feasible to retrieve metal from various minerals.

China recently announced a substantial increase in its lithium reserves, a 1,740-mile (2,800 km) belt of spodumene located in Tibet, a hard rock ore that is a vital source of lithium. Initial estimates suggest that the spodumene belt alone may contain more than 6.5 million tons of lithium, with potential figures reaching up to a staggering 30 million tons.

Additionally, explorations on the Tibetan Plateau have unveiled salt lakes anticipated to contain over 14 million tonnes of lithium, ranking as the third-largest of its kind globally. These discoveries extend the potential of exploring similar reserves in geologically comparable areas across the neighboring provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, and Xinjiang.

Innovations in extraction technology play a vital role in expanding China’s capabilities of exploiting newly discovered lithium reserves. Chinese researchers have made significant progress in processing lepidolite, a mineral previously known for its extraction challenges due to high costs and technical difficulties. This breakthrough is expected to unlock an additional 10 million tonnes of lithium in Jiangxi, with prospects for more in Hunan and Inner Mongolia.

Lithium plays an instrumental role in China's rapidly expanding new energy sector. It is a critical component for manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and various electronics.

The country's vast population, rapid economic growth, and escalating demand for EVs have intensified its need for this valuable resource. In 2022 China accounted for 76 percent of the global lithium-ion battery production capacity. China has invested heavily in its sourcing and manufacturing processes over the past two decades as the largest lithium-ion battery consumer.

Historically, China has relied heavily on imported lithium, contributing to increased production costs and stifling the growth of industries dependent on this metal. In response, Beijing has vigorously explored new reserves within its borders. The discovery of significant lithium reserves is anticipated to reduce this dependence and mitigate the economic impact of imports.

Lithium extraction, primarily from hard rock ores and natural brines, poses substantial environmental and energy challenges. However, recent technical advancements are expected to make this process easier and relieve the global strain on supplies for a healthier market environment.

Moreover, Chinese researchers are developing innovative extraction techniques to tap into low-quality brines and seawater, which could revolutionize the industry.

Additionally, China is advancing its mining operations in Mali, one of the world’s largest untapped hard rock lithium reserves. Despite security challenges, strict mining codes, and supply saturation, the project's ambitious first phase aims to produce 506,000 tons of lithium annually, with plans to double output in the second phase.

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Battle of Ain Jalut: First Major Defeat Of The Mongol Empire

Battle of Ain Jalut, also spelled Ayn Jalut, was fought between the Bahri Mamluks of Egypt and the Mongol Empire on 3 September 1260 near the spring of Ain Jalut in southeastern Galilee in the Jezreel Valley. It marks as the first major loss of the Mongolian advances and halted their expansion into Arabia and Europe.

Continuing the westward expansion of the Mongol Empire, led by the armies of Hulagu Khan captured and sacked Baghdad in 1258, along with the Ayyubid capital of Damascus sometime later. Hulagu sent envoys to Cairo demanding that the Mamluk Sultan of Eqypt Qutuz surrender the country. Qutuz responded by killing the envoys and displaying their heads on the Bab Zuweila gate of Cairo.

Shortly after this, Möngke Khan was slain in battle against the Southern Song. Hulagu was compelled to returned to Mongolia with the bulk of his army to attend the kurultai in accordance with Mongol customs, leaving approximately 10,000 troops west of the Euphrates under the command of Kitbuqa.

Learning of the new developments, Qutuz immediately advanced his army from Cairo towards Palestine. Kitbuqa sacked Sidon, before turning his army south towards the Spring of Harod to meet Qutuz' forces.

Using hit-and-run tactics and a feigned retreat by Mamluk General Baibars, combined with a final flanking maneuver by Qutuz, the Mongol army was forced to retreat toward Bisan, after which the Mamluks led a final counterattack, which resulted in the deaths of many Mongols, including Kitbuqa himself.

The battle has been cited as the first time the Mongols were permanently prevented from expanding their influence; it also marked the first of two defeats the Mongols would face in their attempts to invade Egypt and the Levant, the other being the Battle of Marj al-Saffar in 1303.

Behind all these, there are some political maneuverings happening in the area. The Mongols, for instance, attempted to attempted to enlist the christians by propposing the formation of a Franco-Mongol alliance or at least to demand the submission of the remnant of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, now centered on Acre.

However, the efforts did not push through for several reasons. First, Pope Alexander IV had forbidden it. Secondly, tensions between the Franks and the Mongols had increased when Julian of Sidon caused an incident which resulted in the death of one of Kitbuqa's grandsons. This angered Kitbuqa, which led to the sacking of Sidon. Lastly, the Barons of Acre and the remainder of the Crusader outposts, contacted by the Mongols, had also been approached by the Mamluks and sought military assistance against the Mongols.

Though the Mamluks were the traditional enemies of the Franks, the Barons of Acre recognised the Mongols as the more immediate menace and so the Crusaders opted for a position of cautious neutrality between the two forces.

In an unusual move, they agreed that the Egyptian Mamluks could march north through the Crusader states unmolested and even camp to resupply near Acre. When news arrived that the Mongols had crossed the Jordan River, Sultan Qutuz and his forces proceeded southeast, toward the spring called Ain Jalut, also known as Harod's spring in Hebrew, in the Jezreel Valley.

The aftermath of the battle is equally dramatic as the politics behind the scene.

Hulagu Khan ordered the execution of the last Ayyubid emir of Aleppo and Damascus, An-Nasir Yusuf, and his brother, who were in captivity, after he heard the news of the defeat of the Mongol army at Ain Jalut. However, the Mamluks captured Damascus five days later after Ain Jalut, followed by Aleppo within a month.

On the way back to Cairo after the victory at Ain Jalut, Qutuz was assassinated by several emirs in a conspiracy led by General Baibars, who later became the new Sultan. Local Ayyubid emirs sworn to the Mamluk sultanate subsequently defeated another Mongol force of 6,000 at Homs, which ended the first Mongol expedition into Syria. Sultan Baibars and his successors would go on to capture the last of the crusader states in the Holy Land by 1291.

Internecine conflict prevented Hulagu Khan from being able to bring his full power against the Mamluks to avenge the pivotal defeat at Ain Jalut. Berke Khan, the Khan of the Golden Horde to the north of Ilkhanate, had converted to Islam and watched with horror as his cousin destroyed the Abbasid Caliph, the spiritual and administrative center of Islam.

The Muslim historian Rashid-al-Din Hamadani quoted Berke as sending the following message to Mongke Khan, protesting the attack on Baghdad since he did not know that Mongke had died in China: "He (Hulagu) has sacked all the cities of the Muslims, and has brought about the death of the Caliph. With the help of God I will call him to account for so much innocent blood." The Mamluks, learning through spies that Berke was a Muslim and was not fond of his cousin, were careful to nourish their ties to him and his Khanate.

Later on, Hulagu was able to send only a small army of two tumens in his sole attempt to attack the Mamluks in Aleppo in December 1260. They were able to massacre a large number of Muslims in retaliation for the death of Kitbuqa, but after a fortnight could make no other progress and had to retreat.

After the Mongol succession was finally settled, with Kublai as the last Great Khan, Hulagu returned to his lands by 1262 and massed his armies to attack the Mamluks and avenge Ain Jalut. However, Berke Khan initiated a series of raids in force that lured Hulagu north, away from the Levant, to meet him. Hulagu suffered a severe defeat in an attempted invasion north of the Caucasus in 1263. That was the first open war among the Mongols and signaled the end of the unified empire. Hulagu Khan died in 1265 and was succeeded by his son Abaqa.

The Muslim Mamluks defeated the Mongols in all battles except one. Beside a victory to the Mamluks in Ain Jalut, the Mongols were defeated in the second Battle of Homs, Elbistan and Marj al-Saffar. After five battles with the Mamluks, the Mongols only won at the Battle of Wadi al-Khaznadar. They never returned to Syria again.

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What Happened During The Ottoman Christian Genocide?

During the height of the Ottoman Empire rule, there was a radical nationalist group called the 'Young Turks' that carried out one of the most horrific genocides between 1915-1923.

While Armenians were the most affluent and widely persecuted group of the empire, perpetrators sought to purge the Ottoman Empire of all Christian minorities. This included Assyrians and Greeks. Scholars estimate that 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered, but the total death toll is over 2 million people.

The term 'Assyrian' encompasses the Chaldeans, Nestorians, Syriacs, Arameans, and more. Before 1915, between 500,000 and 600,000 Assyrians lived in the Ottoman Empire. They were persecuted due to prevailing anti-Christian sentiments and because of their pursuit for independence from the Empire.

In started in 1821 when the Greek War of Independence established a Greek state that was separate from the Ottoman Empire. This war, after decades of Greek revolts, turned many Ottoman Turks against the Greek people.

At the dawn of the 20th century, nearly 2 million Orthodox Greeks remained in the Ottoman Empire. Religious and ethnic tensions escalated during Greco-Turkish conflicts in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), leading many Turks to see Ottoman Greeks as accomplices to the runaway Greek state.

In the 1500s, the vast Ottoman Empire spanned Asia Minor, much of the Middle East, southeastern Europe, and North Africa. However, by the 20th century, the Empire was experiencing a steady loss of territory to other regional powers. Christian minorities were publicly blamed for the Empire’s decline and were persecuted as a result.

Before 1915, Christians, including the Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontic and Anatolian Greeks, were dispersed throughout the Ottoman Empire. During the genocide, the majority of their populations were displaced, either by forced deportations to the Mesopotamian desert or by mass exodus to escape persecution.

The genocide of the Assyrians was similar to that of the Armenians. Hundreds of thousands of Assyrians were deported to the desert in death marches, during which many died from starvation or disease. Women were raped and enslaved. Many villages or deportation convoys were massacred.

In the Greek case, Greco-Turkish military conflicts were used as a pretext for mass-deportations. During the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), Turkish forces committed mass rapes and civilian massacres when they overtook Greek villages or cities.

Between 250,000 and 500,000 Assyrians and around 350,000 Greeks were killed during the Ottoman Christian Genocide. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced.

After the genocide, the international community was largely distracted in the wake of World War I. It was not until the late 20th century that the Armenian genocide began to gain global recognition. The worldwide Armenian diaspora, a relatively cohesive group of about 11 million people, has successfully pursued advocacy to gain recognition.

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Aussie Start-up Develops Carbon Pollution In Concrete

An Australia-based startup has just touted their new concrete mixture that could be a valuable weapon in the fight to reduce carbon pollution.

According to SmartCompany, Kapture, a climate tech startup from Melbourne, has figured out how to sequester carbon dioxide pollution, one of the primary causes behind the overheating of the planet, within its concrete.

CEO Raj Bagri explained that the technology can be retrofitted onto existing diesel engines that power the mixing process and other aspects of concrete creation. The byproduct of those captured emissions can be used to replace Portland cement, one of the key ingredients of concrete, and another producer of planet-warming pollution.

The process uses a proprietary solvent that Bagri declined to name, which breaks down the carbon emissions — a process the company claims will offset between 0.7 and 1.2 tons of carbon dioxide pollution for every ton of solvent used, in addition to the carbon captured by the device itself.

"As a business, we're tackling emissions from true sources — diesel emissions — and we're reducing concrete emissions, and there's no green premium," Bagri said, "No one in the world has developed a product that can go into the concrete-making process with no green premium."

The production of concrete is a massive source of planet-warming carbon dioxide, accounting for 8 percent of global annual pollution, according to the report.

While Kapture's technology is unique, it's not the only company trying to use concrete as a pathway toward reducing carbon pollution. Scientists have also created concrete that uses hazardous waste products, taking it out of the atmosphere. Hempcrete, or concrete made with hemp as one of the primary ingredients, can also serve as a carbon sink. And researchers have been perfecting a type of concrete made from rice that can also reduce the process' carbon footprint.

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"Mystery Volcano" That Caused Mini Ice Age Identified

After 200 years, the unknown volcano that erupted so explosively in 1831 that it cooled Earth’s climate, has been identified.

The eruption was one of the most powerful of the 19th century, spewing so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that annual average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped by about one 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). The event took place during the last gasp of the Little Ice Age, one of the coldest periods on Earth in the past 10,000 years.

While the year of this historic eruption was known, the volcano’s location was not. Researchers recently solved that puzzle by sampling ice cores in Greenland, peering back in time through the cores’ layers to examine sulfur isotopes, grains of ash and tiny volcanic glass shards deposited between 1831 and 1834.

Using geochemistry, radioactive dating and computer modeling to map particles’ trajectories, the scientists linked the 1831 eruption to an island volcano in the northwest Pacific Ocean, they reported last 31 December in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the analysis, the mystery volcano was Zavaritskii (also spelled Zavaritsky) on Simushir Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago, an area disputed by Russia and Japan. Before the scientists’ findings, Zavaritskii’s last known eruption was in 800 BC.

"For many of Earth’s volcanoes, particularly those in remote areas, we have a very poor understanding of their eruptive history," said lead study author Dr. William Hutchison, a principal research fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom.

"Zavaritskii is located on an extremely remote island between Japan and Russia. No one lives there and historical records are limited to a handful of diaries from ships that passed these islands every few years," Hutchison told CNN in an email.

With little information available about Zavaritskii’s activity during the 19th century, no one previously suspected that it could be a candidate for the 1831 eruption. Instead, researchers considered volcanoes that were closer to the equator, such as the Babuyan Claro volcano in the Philippines, according to the study.

"This eruption had global climatic impacts but was wrongly attributed to a tropical volcano for a long time period," said Dr. Stefan Brönnimann, unit leader in climatology at the University of Bern in Switzerland. "The research now shows that the eruption took place on the Kurils, not in the tropics," said Brönnimann, who was not involved in the study.

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China Boasts Fast Space-Ground Laser Transmission

There is a race right now on who can establish satellite-to-ground laser communications first. Recently, China achieved a major milestone, which puts it ahead of Elon Musk's Starlink.

The nation successfully attained a 100 gigabit per second data transmission rate in satellite-to-ground laser communication. This unprecedented speed — ten times faster than their previous record — opens doors to a new era of space-based technologies.

Chang Guang Satellite Technology, the company behind the Jilin-1 constellation, accomplished this feat. Jilin-1 is reported to be the "world's largest sub-meter commercial remote sensing satellite network."

As per South China Morning Post (SCMP), the data was transmitted between a mobile truck-based ground station and one of the 117 constellation satellites in Earth’s orbit.

Interestingly, this advancement gives Chang Guang Satellite a lead over Starlink.

"Musk’s Starlink has revealed its laser inter-satellite communication system but hasn’t deployed laser satellite-to-ground communication yet. We think they might have the technology, but we’ve already started large-scale deployment," Wang Hanghang, the company’s head of laser communication ground station technology, told SCMP.

Hanghang added: "We plan to deploy these laser communication units across all satellites in the Jilin-1 constellation to improve their efficiency, with a goal of networking 300 satellites by 2027."

With technological advancement, satellites are getting smarter and better at capturing detailed information. However, sending all that data back to Earth using traditional methods is becoming a bottleneck.

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Leftover Coffee Grounds Can Strengthen Concrete

Concrete production could receive a boost once they start introducing a new recipe in the mix that will make concrete 30 percent stronger. This was the conclusion after researchers in Australia found out that adding charred coffee grounds to the mix could solve multiple problems at the same time.

Every year the world produces a staggering 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste globally. Most ends up in landfills.

"The disposal of organic waste poses an environmental challenge as it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change," explained RMIT University engineer Rajeev Roychand.

With a booming construction market globally, there's also an ever increasing demand for resource intensive concrete causing another set of environmental challenges too.

"The ongoing extraction of natural sand around the world – typically taken from river beds and banks – to meet the rapidly growing demands of the construction industry has a big impact on the environment," said RMIT engineer Jie Li.

"There are critical and long-lasting challenges in maintaining a sustainable supply of sand due to the finite nature of resources and the environmental impacts of sand mining. With a circular-economy approach, we could keep organic waste out of landfill and also better preserve our natural resources like sand."

Organic products like coffee grounds can't be added directly to concrete because they leak chemicals that weaken the building material's strength. So using low energy levels the team heated coffee waste to over 350 °C (around 660 °F) while depriving it of oxygen.

This process is called pyrolyzing. It breaks down the organic molecules, resulting in a porous, carbon-rich charcoal called biochar, that can form bonds with and thereby incorporate itself into the cement matrix.

The researchers cautioned that they still need to assess the long term durability of their cement product. They're now working on testing how the hybrid coffee-cement performs under freeze/thaw cycles, water absorption, abrasions and many more stressors.

The team is also working on creating biochars from other organic waste sources, including wood, food waste and agricultural waste.

"Our research is in the early stages, but these exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill," said RMIT engineer Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch.

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Combining Six Oscillators Can Change The Quantum World

Top researchers at EPFL have found a way to combine the power of six mechanical oscillators into one collective state. This is considered a big breakthrough because this will allow the development of ultra-precise sensors and other components crucial for large-scale quantum systems.

Mechanical oscillators are devices found in many everyday tools and technologies. They have the ability to produce precise, repetitive motion by converting kinetic energy into potential energy and vice versa.

An example of this is the pendulum in your wall clock that swings back and forth. Springs and pistons are another example. However, so far, these macroscopic oscillators have been used for regular applications. Scientists want to use them for quantum systems.

This is because "controlling mechanical oscillators at the quantum level is essential for developing future technologies in quantum computing and ultra-precise sensing," the study authors note.

Previous research works have focused on using a single mechanical oscillator for quantum systems. This approach works well for small-scale applications, such as quantum squeezing (a technique to reduce uncertainty in one aspect of a system) or ground-state cooling (cooling the system to its lowest energy state).

However, powerful large-scale quantum systems "demand exceptionally precise control over multiple oscillators with nearly identical properties," according to the EPFL team. This is where findings from the new study could help.

The researchers used a technique called sideband cooling. It involves the use of a laser to cool atoms and ions to their ground state. When this laser is applied to an oscillator, it brings down the thermal vibrations in the system, causing it to become still.

Using this technique, the study authors turned six individual oscillators into a collective system, a hexamer. They also linked the oscillators to a microwave cavity that allowed the oscillators to interact more effectively.

"More interestingly, by preparing the collective mode in its quantum ground state, we observed quantum sideband asymmetry, which is the hallmark of quantum collective motion. Typically, quantum motion is confined to a single object, but here it spanned the entire system of oscillators," explained Marco Scigliuzzo, study co-author and a postdoc researcher at EPFL.

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